


Hey Government, I'm Not Dead Yet!

by Eiiri



Series: In From the Cold-verse [6]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bureaucracy, Bureaucracy is a Pain in the Butt, Gen, I'm Not Dead Yet, Legally Dead, Slice of Life, Social Security, reality sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 12:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13681596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiiri/pseuds/Eiiri
Summary: So, Bucky Barnes did not die in 1945--long story, but it's true.  Only problem is, the Social Security Administration doesn't know that, so Bucky and Steve embark on the grueling bureaucratic processes of getting James Buchanan Barnes declared alive.





	Hey Government, I'm Not Dead Yet!

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the timeline of In From the Cold after the main story, but does not contain spoilers and can be read without having read all of IFtC (which is good, because at time of posting I haven't written all of IFtC yet....)  
> In any case, enjoy!

Steve and Bucky walked into the Social Security Administration office on Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn, the both of them wearing sweatshirts and baseball caps. Bucky had a backpack full of papers over one shoulder. Steve went up to the counter and softly said, “Hey, we have an appointment at ten for James Barnes.”

The receptionist offered a professional smile and clicked something. “Alright. Take a seat and you'll be called shortly.”

“Thank you.” Steve nodded toward the waiting area chairs. He and Bucky sat. Bucky dropped his bag of paperwork at his feet. They both sighed.

 

~*~

 

“We need to get you declared alive,” Steve said as he shrugged into a t-shirt.

Bucky paused in brushing his teeth. “Whah?”

“I mean, you're legally dead.” Steve sat on the edge of their bed. “You can't get a bank account or a credit card or any of your back pay—or a job or insurance or anything—until you get your social security number reinstated.”

Bucky spat in the sink and wiped his mouth. “So what? I've been fine without it for—jeez, how long has it been? Months.”

Steve shook his head. “You've been living under the radar. You're technicality an undocumented citizen right now, which is kind of a problem. The only reason it hasn't been an issue yet is Tony has enough money we've been able to circumvent the bureaucracy of your medical treatment by just paying people off. You don't have insurance right now, all your tests and surgeries and everything have been paid for right out of Tony's pocket. You should probably thank him, by the way.”

Bucky sighed. “Yeah, I guess.” He came and sat next to Steve. “But—if I'm dead, I can't be arrested.”

“Actually, I think you can.” Steve ran a hand up through Bucky's hair and tilted his head down so he could kiss the top of his hair. “They'd just have to get you declared alive before taking you to court, and you're high profile enough that they _would_.”

“Fuck,” Bucky huffed.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed.

 

~*~

 

Bucky's name was called and he and Steve quickly stopped fiddling on their phones, he grabbed his bag, and they got up. They were led back to a large inner office, then to one cubical in particular where they greeted by a pleasant but serious-seeming matronly woman in a purple cardigan. “Good morning, sit, sit. My name is Lorna Bridges. What can I do for you? Your appointment indicates you need a change made to your social security information, but I'm guessing it's not just a name change, you can apply for that online. What brings you in?”

“I'm legally dead.” Bucky raised his hand. “As you can see, I'm still alive and breathing, so I need my social security number turned back on.”

“Ah.” Lorna tutted. “That is a problem.” She clicked through a few things on her computer. “Do you have your social security card with you?”

“Yeah, hang on.” Bucky unzipped his backpack and started hunting through the files for the old, yellowed little card.

“It's really a problem,” Lorna said. “Nobody realizes how often mistakes get made and people get listed as dead who aren't and it's such a hassle to set right. When did you realize you'd been erroneously listed dead and do you know how long ago that happened?”

“Well, actually...” Bucky began. He looked at Steve.

“He was listed KIA in World War Two,” Steve finished.

Lorna blinked and looked up at them—really looked—then leaned back in her chair. “Well I'll be…. Captain Rogers, I did not recognize you.”

“That's kind of the idea behind the hat, ma'am,” Steve said politely.

“Then that makes you,” she looked to Bucky, then to the appointment info on her screen. “James Barnes? James Buchanan Barnes?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Bucky placed his old social security card on the desk.

 

~*~

 

“It should not,” Steve griped as he scoured Google, “be this fucking hard to figure out how to legally resurrect somebody. That article you found on Priceonomics says a fucking thousand people are accidentally listed dead every month because of fucking typos. If it's so fucking common to have to get un-dead, why the fuck is it so fucking hard to find out how you're supposed to fucking do that?”

“Language, Cap,” Tony sing-songed from the other end of the kitchen.

“Fuck you, Stark,” Steve called from his seat in the breakfast nook.

Across from Steve, Bucky asked, “Haven't you done this before? What did you have to to get declared alive?”

“ _I_ didn't do anything,” Steve huffed. “S.H.I.E.L.D. handled it.”

“Jarvis,” Bucky said to the ceiling, “can you find out what the fuck S.H.I.E.L.D. did to get Steve un-killed?”

“Just a moment, Sergeant Barnes,” Jarvis said. Then, “They provided extensive proof of Captain Roger's identity to the Social Security Administration in order to get his number reinstated. Unfortunately, their records do not specify what 'extensive proof of identity' entails.”

“I mean,” Tony said, wandering over with a bag of dried strawberries, “if it's anything like getting a new driver's license you need you social security card—”

“I don't have one,” Bucky said.

“Birth certificate.”

Bucky shook his head, but Steve asked, “Weren't you issued one retroactively by the military?”

Bucky frowned. “Yeah, so?”

“So the D.O.D. has it on file somewhere,” Steve said.

“Whoa, back up.” Tony pulled out a chair and sat in it backwards. “How do you get a birth certificate retroactively issued? You get that when you're born. That's why it's called a birth certificate.”

“I was born in a goddamn log cabin in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, Indiana in 1920,” Bucky said with exaggerated patience. “There was no hospital, not even a doctor, I didn't get a birth certificate. My birth was recorded in the family bible by my grandfather, who happened to be the local minister. That was normal.”

“If my mother hadn't had such a rough pregnancy and wound up in the hospital with me,” Steve said, “I probably wouldn't have had one either. Lots of people didn't, but the military required them, so the military issued them.”

“Huh.” Tony ate a handful of strawberries thoughtfully. “Wonder if that bible would count as ID—think it wound up in a museum? Hell, think your social security card wound up in a museum?”

“No idea,” Bucky sighed.

“What other ID could he have?” Steve asked.

“Military IDs, if you got 'em, especially if they've got a picture. Guess you don't have a current passport and I don't think they'll take expired ones—I dunno, they might.” Tony tossed a berry into his mouth. “Did they take you fingerprints in the army? That file oughta work if so. Your fucking Hydra file has your picture in it, and I think it's got your name, at least in Russian, right? I'd say DNA but I don't think there's anything of yours that got saved that'd be useful for a DNA match especially since you never had any kids that you know of—”

“ _That I know of_?” Bucky challenged.

Tony shrugged. “I'm just sayin'….”

“You kinda did get around,” Steve pointed out.

“None of my girlfriends ever got pregnant.” Bucky crossed his arms.

“At least,” Steve said, “none of them ever _told_ you they did.”

“Oh for fuck's sake.” Bucky rolled his eyes. “Would old pictures of me work? Or films? There's those newsreels—if they say it's me?”

“I don't think that's valid ID,” Tony said, “but it couldn't hurt. The more evidence you have that you're you the better.”

 

~*~

 

“Well,” Lorna said carefully, “I believe you, but you need legal proof of identity, and after so much time—” She broke off as Bucky started pulling files out of his bag and setting them on the desk.

“My military file with photo ID, name, and fingerprints. You're welcome to print to me, right hand only I'm afraid.” He added a folder. “My Hydra file: photos, name and codename and aliases, date and location they picked me up—which match the date and location in Steve's report of my alleged death.” He added the report to the stack, then another folder. “English translation of the Hydra file. My birth certificate, retroactively issued by the military.” He pulled a black leather-bound book from the backpack and dropped it on the desk with a thunk. “Family bible in which my birth was first recorded along with its authentication papers from the Smithsonian—I asked for it back.” He pulled out a plastic sleeve with a picture inside. “School photo from fifth grade—nineteen-thirty-one, I was eleven, my name's on the back. Military passport—it expired like sixty years ago but it's got my name, photo, date of birth.” He opened another zipper in the backpack, slipped out a tablet computer, and set it on top of the bible. “Hour and a half of newsreels from World War Two where I'm plainly identified either by narration or my name on my uniform. Flash my dogtags at the camera in one of them. There's also a still of that so you can read the tags. Unfortunately I don't have the tags themselves, I don't know what happened to them after Hydra picked me up.” He pulled one more folder from the bag. “Signed, notarized statements from Steve, Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, Sam Wilson, Pepper Potts, and Erin Mockta who has been acting as my therapist, all testifying to my identity.”

Lorna took a deep breath. “Oh, boy.” She reached for her desk phone. “Excuse me just a moment.” She hit a speed dial key.

 

~*~

 

Bucky got fingerprinted, they took photos, Bucky sighed a few things, all the documentation he'd brought in was packed up, and he and Steve were sent home to wait. Then the hard part started.

No word for weeks while the engines of bureaucracy slowly ground through their processes.

Then, one day during lunch, Bruce's phone rang. He wiped his mouth and answered. “Hello? This is he. Yes. Yes. I did. Yes, he is. I do. No problem. You too. Goodbye.” He hung up and looked over at Bucky. “That was the Social Security Administration calling to verify my statement of your identity—they had to make sure I really wrote and signed it.”

“At least they're actually doing something,” Bucky said flatly.

At the other end of the island, Clint's phone started buzzing in his pocket. He arched an eyebrow and put his phone to his ear. “Hello? That's me. Yup. Uh-huh. Sure did. Yeah, I'm lookin' right at him now actually. Yeah, wouldn't have signed it if I didn't. Yup. Of course. Cool. Bye.” He hung up and put his phone down. “Well.” He gestured toward Bruce. “Yeah.”

Later, watching Natasha have pretty much the exact same phone conversation, Steve leaned into Bucky. “Think they've called the D.O.D?”

Bucky snorted. “Probably called them like six times. And the Smithsonian.”

“I know they sent your fingerprints to an analyst,” Natasha interjected, having just finished her call.

“How exactly do you know that?” Bucky asked suspiciously.

She shrugged. “I have Jarvis monitoring a remnant of the S.H.I.E.L.D. epinet I converted to ping when any of us have identifying information crop up somewhere.”

Steve and Bucky looked at each other. Steve arched an eyebrow. Bucky shrugged. “She's good at her job.”

 

After yet another agonizingly uneventful week, a package came in the mail from the Social Security Administration: a banker's box taped securely shut and wrapped in brown paper, full of all the ID Bucky had brought into the office—except for his old Social Security card. Three days later, Steve cleared his throat to interrupt Bucky and Clint in the dojo, casually throwing shiruken into one of Clint's archery targets. They both turned and Steve gave a little wave with the envelope in his hand. “From the Social Security Administration for a one James B. Barnes.”

Excitedly, Bucky snatched the envelope from him, tore it open, and pulled out his crisp new Social Security card. Clint clapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome back to the land of the officially living.”


End file.
